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Sir, You Are Being Hunted: And Answering A Few Questions Raised By Our First Trailer

We’ve had some fantastic coverage for our trailer, which was viewed over one hundred and a ten thousand times last week. Everyone on the Big Robot core team – Dan, Tom, James, and myself – are thrilled with the response, and I am sure our contributing artist Christophe Canon is pleased to have his work gain so much attention. (He’s sunning himself on the beach right now, so I can’t ask him!)

However, the trailer raised lots of questions, and we decided to answer them here.1. Why is there no gameplay footage?

Because the gameplay isn’t ready for us to show. There are a million small jobs to do before it’s ready for the cameras: more animations, balancing combat responsiveness, tuning the stealth responses, making hunting hounds hunt. Plenty of work!

That said, everything in the trailer is in-engine footage from the alpha version of the game. The first thing we focused on was making the world, which as you can see there is looking pretty good. The stage is set and now we’re populating it with the actors and action. Of course it still won’t be finished when we show it, but we do need it to have trimmed its moustache and put on its best hat.

2. Exactly what is the gameplay?

In short: first-person, open-world survival. In long: that’s for another post and videos to come.

3. How big is the art team? Do you have an animator?

We don’t have any full-time art content people.

The art “team” consists of a few freelancers, such as Christophe Canon, who do not work full-time for Big Robot. Canon modelled our robot designs and has done some of the texture work, as well as some animation. There’s also some beautiful hand-drawn inventory art, which I will show off soon, by Martin Davies, who designed the Angries in Fallen City.

Everything else has been fashioned in Unity by Tom (programming) and James (design).

4. How big are the maps?

We are going to have an archipelago of 1km2 islands. Individual areas will be 1km2, each made up of various regions, from coastal cliffs, through forests and fields, to roads and villages. We’re going to provide some level of access to this generation process to players, so you’re going to be able to tinker with your island composition, and create islands with different quite different looks, layouts, and feels.

5. When is the game coming out?

In 2013.

The exact release date will depend on how development of the various core mechanics go. Obviously we want to get it into the hands of players as soon as possible, but no one wants to rush the process, either.

6. When can I pre-order?

We are currently looking at our options for a pre-order or Kickstarter program. The game will definitely benefit from this kind of approach, so it’s just a question of precisely how and when. It won’t be more than a couple of months before we let you know, anyway.

7. Will there be a beta?

For pre-ordering, whatever form that takes, yes. Even then, probably not until some way into 2013.